Melvin Burgess & Jeremy Dyson

Hauntings and hunger at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

One of the pleasures of EIBF’s many double-headers is the way they uncover connections between disparate writers. Melvin Burgess is best known for his award-winning YA social realist fiction, while Jeremy Dyson is the non-performing writer from The League of Gentlemen, but they both come to the festival this year bringing freshly-published horror books. Hunger is Burgess’s suitably ghoulish twist on zombie lore, written for the rebirthed Hammer horror imprint, and gives him an opportunity to revel in genre like never before. Dyson’s book is a little tricksier, as he explains: ‘The Haunted Book began life as an investigation into my own literary first love: the anthology of true ghost stories. It’s my personal take on the form, fusing it with my love of books themselves. It also started with a question: what happens if a book turns out to be haunted by another, older book?’ The depths of horror should quickly accumulate at this event, as Dyson and Burgess dig out the connections between their own books, and the books that haunt them.

While a strain of horror has rippled through their previous work, this event is rammed with terror. The League of Gentlemen’s non-performing member, Jeremy Dyson, is a hardened sceptic whose investigations into creepy goings-on for The Haunted Book altered his views. Or did it? Melvin Burgess adds to his award-winning…

Uncompromising and challenging, Melvin Burgess is one of today’s most recognised writers for young adults. His latest novel, The Hit, features a drug that gives the best high but kills within a week. Nick Lake, with his second novel Hostage Three, is proving that he too has a strong and unique voice. Join them both as…